New book on China and the Belt and Road Initiative

Dr Filippo Boni has co-edited a volume taking stock of the first 10 years of the Belt and Road Initiative and how it played out in Pakistan. 

Pakistan occupies an elevated role in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and hosts its ‘flagship’ project, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). It has attracted the largest volume of investments under the BRI and opened itself comprehensively to its transformative potential. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of CPEC’s impact on Pakistan’s economy, politics, and society, covering its developmental benefits as well as resulting controversies.

Interdisciplinary and international experts capture the complexity of CPEC, presenting new empirical data in the form of interviews, archival materials, and documentary evidence. Covering topics ranging from agriculture to the environment, gender to security, they focus on local outcomes challenging prevalent narratives about the BRI as a strategic, China-driven vehicle to transform other countries in its image. They argue that examples like CPEC should be understood as interactive processes between China and its international partners, which produce interdependent relations between them. Beyond the case of CPEC, these findings contribute to the burgeoning field of ‘Global China’, through a comprehensive yet granular assessment of the first ten years of the BRI’s flagship project.

Here is the link to access the book.

Dr Filippo Boni was also quoted in an article on China-Pakistan relations published by The New York Times. The article detailed the evolution of Chinese investments in Pakistan, against the backdrop of Pakistan's domestic politics.   

Other publications which came out by Filippo Boni this year: 

(2024) "De-risking, re-balancing and recentralising: Intra-state relations in Chinese-backed transport infrastructure projects in Europe", Political Geography, 113 (2024), pp.1-13. (with Giles Mohan, Samuel Rogers, Florian Schaefer, Yue Wang). 

(2024) "Does populism matter in EU-China Relations? The cases of Italy and Czechia", Journal of Common Market Studies, (Early View) (with Gosia Jakimow and Richard Turcsányi).

(2024) "China's normative influence in Europe: the case of Sino-Italian relations under the Belt and Road Initiative", in Indrajit Roy et al (eds) (2024) Rising Power, Limited Influence. The Politics of Chinese Investments in Europe and the Liberal International Order" , Oxford: Oxford University Press.